years for the continent to take the
initiative, and there will not yet be enough business to build the road.

This enterprise must be looked at in the light of a cash-advance from
California and the Eastern States to the Plains, the Mountains, and the
Desert, secured by a pledge of all the mineral and agricultural wealth
of the party of the second part, guarantied by the prospective myriads
of settlers whom the road shall bring to tracts now lying waste through
the mere lack of its existence. In the course of the present article we
shall endeavor to show the solidity of this security, the responsibility
of these indorsers. While we counsel confidence to the capital which
must build the road, we feel it imperative upon the National Government
to enforce its position as that capital's trustee. That capital for the
most part lies east of the Missouri and west of the Sierra Nevada.
Between these two boundaries the road must run for eighteen hundred
miles through a region where capital may well be cautious of intrusting
its life to any less potent authority than that of the Nation itself.

The claims of the Pacific Railroad have usually been urged upon the
ground of its benefit to its _termini_. This ground is adequate to
justify any advance of capital by the cities of New York and San
Francisco. With the completion of the road, San Francisco necessarily
becomes a depot for the entire China trade of the United States, and an
entrepot for much of that between China and Western Europe. With the
development of our Japanese relations, still another stream of wealth,
now incalculable, must flow in through the Golden Gate. In the reverse
current of Asiatic commerce, New York's position at the eastern terminus
of the continental belt gives her a similar share. The gold-transport
and the entire fast-freight business of New York and San Francisco,
now transacted at an enormous expense by Wells and Fargo's Express,
must be transferred _en masse_ to the Pacific Road; while the
passenger-carriage, now devolving on Isthmus steamers and overland
stages, may be passed, practically entire, to the credit of the new
line. Certainly, no traveller who has once purchased bitter experience
with his ticket on Mr. Vanderbilt's line will ever again patronize that
enterprising capitalist, unless he sells his ships and becomes a
stockholder in the Pacific Railroad. The most enthusiastic lover of the
sea must abjure his predilections, when brought to